Kevin Keatts: "How Do You Think I Feel?"
NC State head coach Kevin Keatts discussed handling the season, Terquavion Smith, Georgia Tech, Breon Pass, and much more on his weekly ACC teleconference.
Losing impacts people differently. During these times when you’re away, what are you doing to handle the season?
That’s a good question. When you win, everybody loves you, and it’s the best thing in the world. Obviously sometimes when you lose a game it feels like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders because what happens is every coach is a competitor and every player is a competitor and people are upset that you’re losing.
The coaches are the worst. If you think you’re upset, then how do you think I feel?
I cope with it different ways. I talk to certain colleagues around the country anyway, whether it’s winning or losing. I have a small group of guys that I communicate with one way or the other, follow some of their scores, and talk to some of those guys. For me, it’s just reall going back to the drawing board. We spend as a coaches, I’m sure a lot of others to do too, a lot of time watching film. We call it rewatching the game. We may rewatch it two or three times to figure out if there’s anything we can do to help our squad or some things that we can improve on both ways.
At some point, we have to move on as coaches. I think the kids move on a lot quicker than we do. Coaches, it probably takes us almost until the next time we get in practice before we realize we have to move onto the next game and prepare. A lot of times kids, I think they forget a lot quicker than we do.
In that circle are they patting his back and trying to keep him positive or are they brutally honest to tell you what they see?
A lot of times the folks that I’m talking to don’t have a chance to watch the games, so you talk to them about what happened. But if somebody is patting me on my back and not being brutally honest, that’s not the person I really want to talk to.
Terquavion Smith has been scoring for you and against Pitt he had seven rebounds and six assists. How has he progressed in the parts other than the scoring?
He’s going to be judged a lot on how much he scores the basketball. Whether you watch the game or not, you’re going to pick up the stat sheet and be like, ‘man, he didn’t shoot it well,’ or ‘he had a great night.’
I see a kid who is maturing right in front of our eyes. He’s starting to pass the ball a lot. He’s starting to understand concepts. He’s getting better defensively, and of course on this particular team we need him to score to have the opportunity to win games, but also we’re trying to develop the entire person.
I think what’s happening with him is he’s starting to get better, e’s starting to have a better feel for college basketball, and that’s what you hope you start to see in a freshman. The growth, especially when you get into February... they’ve picked up some things that they didn’t have when they came in the door and will help them become better players.
You played the Syracuse zone and late you did against Pittsburgh. It seems like Georgia Tech is running a lot of zone as well. Your thoughts on how you’ve fared against zone defense.
I would say we played great, in quotes, against the zone, which is Syracuse’s zone. I thought we did a great job where we shared the ball. I think we made 16 3’s in that game.
I think we’ve had moments. I think we’re like every other team in the country. You can pick out a segment of it and say, ‘man, you played so well against the zone.’ Then there’s a few possessions where you don’t.
The biggest thing for us is that we’ve got to have a lot of player ball movement. We’ve got to do it in different ways. We’ve got to be able to drive the basketball. We’ve got to be able to find open shooters, and one thing that we’ve been good at this year is that we’ve got to do a good job of offensive rebounding.
Georgia Tech has done a great job. Josh [Pastner] has mixed his zones up. He plays some matchup and you get some 1-3-1 and at times some 3-2. We do expect to see some zone and different types of zone against Georgia Tech. Hopefully we can make the right decisions against their zone.
Breon Pass wasn’t at the Pittsburgh game. Is he available for Georgia Tech?
We’ll know a little bit more later on today. He’s just under the weather. It’s not COVID-related. Of course a lot of our focus is on COVID, but there’s a lot of other things going around with colds and flus and all that other stuff. I won’t know exactly. I will say this, he didn’t do much with us yesterday at all.
How do you stay in the moment when you’re having a season like this?
Everybody has to lock in. Our roster is what our roster is. I feel bad for our kids because we lost a Manny and Ernest Ross, and then obviously didn’t even have the opportunity for Greg Gantt to play. But when you look around our league, our league is starting to get hit with some stuff. Florida State was playing as good of basketball as anybody, and then obviously some key injuries have changed that. Same thing you can say about Clemson and then unfortunately for Syracuse also.
I try to keep our guys locked in and focused. I think as a coach, we owe it to each individual kid that is on our team to give them everything, whether we lose one of our key players or not. My focus is to teach and love on these kids and try to get better and not feel sorry for ourselves because nobody else will. That’s one of the things that we’ve done. We know that we’re undermanned going into most games, but what keeps me going is that our guys have completely fought in every game. That doesn’t mean we’ve done everything right, but we’re battling with a limited roster, and I’m proud of these guys for their fight.
In your win over Virginia you shot better against a Tony Bennett team than anyone other than Gonzaga last year. Were you guys so locked in that day that it sent fool’s gold to you guys that you had it worked out? What's happened since?
I hope it wasn’t fool’s gold because we need to shoot it well, but we’ve had some games that I can point to where we’ve played really extremely well and we shot the ball. We did the same thing in the Syracuse game, and I thought early in the year against Purdue on a neutral court that we played extremely well.
It’s not fool’s gold. That’s the strength of our team, and if we’re not making shots, it doesn’t give us the opportunity to win. With no true low post, back-to-the-basket guy, our guys have to make shots. If those guys are making shots then we can make it really tough on you. I think in the Virginia game we found a rhythm, we made shots.
We’re better when we are a passing team and making the right play every time. That’s what I thought we did in the Virginia game. We did a great job of moving the basketball. We found good shots, and we played off of each other. I thought that was important.
What do you see that stands out about Georgia Tech?
When you look at Devoe, I feel like (Michael) Devoe has been here forever, and he is so talented. He is a guy that makes the game look really easy, and Josh has done a really good job of putting him in some great situations.Then (Jordan) Usher plays with so much energy.
Similar to us, we’ve got three guys who we need to play well to have the opportunity. They have two guys that are really good. Like Josh, we ask for that fourth scorer, he asks for that third or fourth scorer who can help them win.
They’re as good as anybody in our league defensively because they confuse you. They run different defenses. They mix it up. On the offensive end, they’re unique, where even though they don’t have great size, they can go small and run the Princeton offense. They do some different stuff.
I know it may not be showing up with wins because of some of the injuries they’ve had this season, but they’re as tough of a matchup as you’ll see because they are unique in the things they do offensively and defensively.